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From Politico's Playbook daily email blast today:
[QUOTE]PALACE INTRIGUE - WashPost A1, "High court speculation: Did Roberts switch vote?" by Robert Barnes and Del Quentin Wilber: "Some wondered whether [Chief Justice John] Roberts originally had joined the court's four conservatives, pointing to oddities in the opinion. The dissent offered by the conservative justices with whom Roberts usually sides in ideological disputes - Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. - read more like an opinion for the court that had been abandoned, said David E. Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University.
"The dissent did not engage in a debate with the controlling opinion offered by Roberts, as is usual in Supreme Court judgments. It contained a long section on whether the law can be severed from the individual mandate, unnecessary if a majority had already found the mandate constitutional. It went to great lengths to establish the reasons the four thought the commerce clause did not offer the powers the Obama administration claimed. It was territory that Roberts already had largely covered in his opinion." [url]http://wapo.st/N0VKGz[/url]
--THE LEAD EDITORIAL of yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "The Roberts Rules," had an even juicier clue: "One telling note is that the dissent refers repeatedly to 'Justice Ginsburg's dissent' and 'the dissent' on the mandate, but of course they should be referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's concurrence. This wording and other sources suggest that there was originally a 5-4 majority striking down at least part of ObamaCare, but then the Chief Justice changed his mind.
"The Justices may never confirm this informed speculation. But if it is true, this is far more damaging to the Court's institutional integrity that the Chief Justice is known to revere than any ruling against ObamaCare. The political class and legal left conducted an extraordinary campaign to define such a decision as partisan and illegitimate. If the Chief Justice capitulated to this pressure, it shows the Court can be intimidated and swayed from its constitutional duties."[/QUOTE]
:eek: W...T...F. Roberts, you weak-minded bastard.
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